Compassion community care development foundation, a Non-Governmental Organization promote menstrual health and hygiene by providing young women and girls with sanitary pads to last at least 3months.
Menstrual products may not be accessible to those vulnerable women and girls in many remote rural areas due to poverty especially during this pandemic. When a woman and girls can’t afford menstrual products, they will look for alternative to stop their bleeding with pieces of rags, unsterilized cloths, toilet paper, or even newspaper. This is unsanitary and a great health risk if menstrual products are not properly used, women and girls may face infections and diseases. We also work with our volunteer doctors and nurses to teach them about puberty or sexual and reproductive health, menstruation and hygiene.
We are creating awareness to eradicate period poverty and pleading to our government to reduce taxation of menstrual products, so it will be affordable for
women and girls. Disposable pads are expensive. Therefore, girls often use old clothes, toilet paper, newspapers, leaves and banana fibre as alternatives. These are not absorbent or secure, and result in discomfort, chaffing, leaks, infections, and shame.
Traditionally, the subject of menstruation is taboo, shrouded in many myths, misconceptions and negative cultural attitudes. Menstruating women and girls are wrongly considered to be ‘contaminated, dirty and impure’. Girls suffer stigma due to inadequate preparations for young girls approaching puberty, lack of or inadequate water to clean and wash up, lack of materials for managing menstrual hygiene, absence of private space and washrooms, inappropriate facilities for disposal of used materials and physical and psychological pains during menstrual period